Life

I had another post written for yesterday, but got shy and decided not to share it quite yet.  So I just thought I would say hey and chat about, well, whatever comes to mind.

DoodleBug has started walking.  She walks across the room and likes to be upright, but she can still crawl faster than either the tortoise or the hare, and will choose to do that sometimes instead.  Today she has a fever.

Daniel has been working overtime the entire month.  It is weird and strange and normal at the same time, and it seemed easy for him to get up an extra hour earlier.  But his time with us is less and the evenings are rushed and hurry, even more so than before.  It is my duty, which I only sometimes achieve, and sometimes my delight to make sure I have dinner prepared before he comes home to ease this rush of the evening.  The kids and I had gone out of town, and D had done the grocery shopping to grill hamburgers.  He felt the pressure of the evening rush since he was now the cook last night.

Princess is happy and anxious.  Her anxiety about starting school comes in the form of an occasional attitude.  But she and Speed Racer have become best friends.  Their imaginations run wild and though she, not he, rarely uses toys; their play is full force, head strong all day long.  I miss the days when I got to play too.  He will miss her so much in the fall when school starts.  Now it seems I simply watch them as I fold the laundry or put the dishes away and wonder where and how they will let me into the playing.  She only 5, and he soon to be 4, how did this happen already, I wonder?  At least, I have decided to bring them into the folding of laundry and the putting away of dishes, and maybe, just maybe, time slows for those moments.

And I, I am lazy when it comes to beauty.  Hardly ever wearing makeup, not wanting to shave my legs.  I am anxious about the end of summer.  I am working on a project, a writing project, which excites and thrills me and scares me.  Just like Daniel's, my writing could be time away from my sweeties.  I feel it is a call from God to do this project and I find it a delight.  I am excited, but I wax and wane excitement when it tugs from my family.  But part of the growing up is the letting go.  I held on too tightly in the past sometimes, so there is freedom in this too.  Funny how life is so full of the bitter and the sweet, as if, every moment, every thing in all of life was both bitter and sweet.  Like Christ's death for example.

I have received grace, a grace more graceful than any other past grace.  A grace less of works and full of freedom.  True grace.  And in the grace, some of my struggles are waning.  I accept that some things that I do not yet understand just are, and though the struggle and ache are still there, I hope.  I have more constant friends now.  My idea of friendship has evolved hopefully for the better.  And I think, and I hope, that at least in some sense, I am calmer, peaceful, more at ease in who I am, what I've been given, and what God is doing.  I am on a bit of a mountain top high and dread the valley low again.  But I am thankful for this breath.  This moment.  This now.